The Secret Soldier jw-5

by Alex Berenson

  Wells bought a ticket to the National Air and Space Museum, took the big escalator upstairs, jogged down. The soccer players drifted in his direction. He walked east, found himself standing at the foot of the Capitol, looking up at its great white dome. Two joggers were making suspiciously slow loops. Or maybe they were just slow. The woman in the Cardinals hat huffed toward him. Any of them could have been watching, or all of them. He had no idea how he could lose this team under these conditions. The mission was impossible. Maybe that was the point. Raviv was always making a point.

  Raviv was sitting near the base of the monument when Wells trotted back. “I saw you coming two blocks away. Very subtle.”

  “It was an impossible assignment.”

  “Don’t whine.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And don’t apologize. Did you lose them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who were they?”

  Wells nodded at the soccer players. “Maybe these guys.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “A couple joggers looked good to me, but they’re gone now. I get it, Guy. Real CS is a lot tougher than training.”

  “There was no one. No team. This idea that any of us have a sixth sense that lets us take three steps in a crowd and know who’s watching, there’s a word for that. Paranoia. You can’t make a team in a place like this unless you have more than thirty minutes. And space to disappear. Or unless they’re completely amateur. Or unless they want you to know. The lesson today is sometimes there’s nobody to lose. Sometimes you’re running from something that doesn’t exist.”

  Sometimes you’re running from something that doesn’t exist. Later, Wells understood that Raviv wasn’t just talking about countersurveillance.

  WELLS’S COMPARTMENT HAD A single narrow bunk, barely long enough to fit him but cool and clean and comfortable, its white sheets softer than he expected. Italy. He locked the door and napped fitfully as the train chugged through tunnels carved into the northern Italian mountains. It arrived in Bologna at 11:20 for a three-minute stop.

  Wells waited two minutes and thirty seconds, grabbed his bag and briefcase, and trotted off. The station was low-ceilinged and tired, nothing like the grand hall in Milan. At the taxi stand, a half-dozen white sedans waited. Wells walked around to the driver’s window of the first taxi. “You speak English?”

  The driver was small and round and stank of cigarettes. “Pretty much.”

  “How much to go to Rome?”

  “This is Bologna.”

  “I know it’s Bologna. I want to go to Rome. The airport.”

  “Fiumicino. Three hundred kilometers. Three hours each way. At this time of night, a thousand euros.”

  Extortion, but Wells didn’t care, thanks to the magic briefcase. “Done.” He opened the front door. “What’s your name?”

  The driver raised a hand. “Before you come in, I like to smoke, okay?” He nodded at a packet of Marlboros on the dash.

  “All right.”

  “And you pay now.”

  Wells peeled two five-hundred-euro notes from his wallet. The driver inspected them, nodded. Wells could read his mind: Should have asked for more. Wells slipped in and shut the door, and they headed out.

  “I am Sylvie.”

  “Sylvie. My pleasure.” Wells closed his eyes. If Sylvie didn’t smoke too much, he might even sleep a little.

  THEN HE HEARD THE engine behind them. He looked in the passengerside mirror to see another taxi, this one a Mercedes minivan, following them from the station. It matched them turn for turn through the city’s winding streets. The driver looked over his shoulder. “Signore.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t agree to this.”

  Wells handed him another five hundred euros. “Drive.”

  So they’d tracked him from Milan, probably all the way from Nice. But he’d bumped them with a simple trick, forced them to chase him in a taxi. Which meant they weren’t pros — not A-level pros, anyway. And they probably didn’t plan to hurt him, or at least had no orders either way. If they did, the train would have been the logical spot. Still. Wells reached into the briefcase, pulled the Beretta.

  Sylvie spewed a torrent of Italian. Wells could understand only one word: polizia. The Fiat slowed. Wells grabbed Sylvie’s shoulder, squeezed.

  “You stop when I say. Not before.” He pulled another five hundred euros from his wallet, put them on the dash. “That’s two thousand euros already for three hours’ work. Get me to the airport and you get two thousand more. No police.”

  “All right, all right.”

  The ramp to the A1 was a few hundred yards ahead. “Get on.” Sylvie hesitated, then spun the wheel hard left, onto the ramp. The Fiat’s tires squealed. The second taxi followed.

  “Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  In response, Sylvie reached for a Marlboro and lit up. He smoked daintily, twin chimneys streaming from his nostrils. For an hour, he drove in silence, sticking to the center lane and the speed limit of one hundred thirty kilometers — about eighty miles — an hour. The lights behind them neither closed nor faded. An oddly restful chase. But Wells intended to lose his pursuers before Rome.

  “How far to the next rest stop?”

  “Maybe fifteen kilos.”

  “Pull over there.”

  “You want a cappuccino? Gelato?”

  “Witty.” Still, Wells couldn’t help but like this roly-poly driver.

  Ten miles later, a blue sign announced the Montepulciano rest stop. A wide, brightly lit building rested on a platform that spanned the highway. Atop it, a sign proclaimed “Autogrill” in white letters ten feet tall.

  “Here?”

  “Here. Go to the end of the parking lot.”

  They pulled off the highway, drove past rows of gas pumps, bright and yellow in the night, past a parking area where big rigs dozed, toward a run-down building that might have been the original rest stop. The other taxi pulled off, too, keeping well behind them. “Stop here. Turn off the engine.”

  As soon as the engine was off, Wells grabbed the key, ignoring Sylvie’s complaints. He stuck the Beretta into the back of his pants, flared out his shirt to hide it. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said.

  He hopped out of the car, popped its trunk. Amid empty bottles of antifreeze and crumpled cigarette cartons, he saw what he’d hoped for — a tire iron. He grabbed it, strode toward the second taxi, his feet crackling on the asphalt, his hands high and visible in the headlights. The minivan churned ahead a few yards, then stopped.

  When he was fifteen yards from the taxi, its back door opened. A man stepped out. He was Arab, with a neatly trimmed mustache. His hands were empty, and Wells didn’t see a holster. Wells set the tire iron on the asphalt. “Let’s talk peacefully,” he said in Arabic. He walked closer to the guy, confidently, his hands high and empty, making clear he didn’t have a weapon. He stopped ten feet away.

  “All right.” The man’s Arabic was as smooth as Abdullah’s. Saudi, almost certainly.

  “Who sent you?”

  “You’re John Wells?”

  “I don’t know that name.”

  The Arab shook his head. “I tell you, stay out of this business. It doesn’t concern you.”

  “I understand,” Wells said, his voice low and soothing. “That makes sense.” He turned as if to walk away, and in one fluid motion reached behind his shirt and pulled the Beretta. On the autostrada the eighteen-wheelers rumbled by heedlessly. “Kneel.”

  The man went to his knees unwillingly, an inch at a time.

  “Who do you work for?” Wells said.

  “The DGSE”—the French intelligence service.

  “The French don’t like Arabs. Who?”

  “I tell you, the DGSE.”

  “If you work for the DGSE, then so do I. Lie down.”

  “Don’t do this.”

 
“I’m not going to hurt you, but I don’t want you following me. Lie down, face on the pavement, hands over your head.”

  The man lowered his face to the asphalt, extended his arms. Wells patted him down, pulled a wallet from his back pocket. He’d check it later.

  “You’ll regret this,” the man murmured.

  “I’ll consider myself warned,” Wells said. He walked over to the Mercedes.

  “I swear I didn’t know,” the driver said. “He hired me, told me to follow.”

  “Turn off your engine, give me the key.”

  The driver did as Wells said. Wells wound up and flung it onto the roof of the abandoned building at the edge of the lot. He grabbed the tire iron, walked back to the Fiat. Sylvie leaned against the sedan. He tossed his cigarette and whistled quietly as Wells approached. “Che stile.”

  “Say again?” Wells threw the tire iron in the trunk.

  “It means ‘What style.’”

  Wells flipped him the Fiat key. “Let’s go.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What else were you hoping to see?”

  AS THEY LEFT THE rest stop behind, Wells relaxed. He was off the grid for now. He flipped through the wallet he’d taken and found eight hundred euros, a credit card, and a Saudi driver’s license, both in the name of Ahmad Maktoum. He’d ask Shafer if the name showed up anywhere. He pocketed the card and license and handed the money to Sylvie.

  “A bonus.”

  “Grazie.”

  Sylvie dropped him at Fiumicino at three a.m. A few travelers, unlucky or too cheap to book a hotel room before an early-morning flight, waited outside the locked terminals. Inside, janitors swept the floors halfheartedly. At this hour, the airport was asleep in an almost human way, alive but hardly moving.

  Wells took advantage of the quiet to dump his pistol in a trash bin. He’d have to get a new one in Lebanon, but for what he was facing, he would need more than a pistol. He had to assume that he was looking at more than one or two jihadis. A training camp seemed likely. And even with surprise on his side, he needed help. Preferably an Arabic speaker who could pass for local.

  He reached for his cell. The East Coast was six hours behind. “How do you feel about another vacation?”

  Gaffan didn’t answer.

  “This one isn’t personal. I promise.”

  “You don’t do partners very well, John.”

  “It’s gonna be interesting. And it’s not volunteer this time. Quite the opposite.”

  “We have a sponsor? Anyone I know?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “I need more.”

  “Tell you when I see you. Get the first flight you can to Larnaca tomorrow morning. Rent a room at the Hilton in Nicosia.”

  “Where?”

  “Cyprus.”

  “Another island. Is this going to be wet?” Wet, in this case, referring to blood, not water.

  “Eight ball says yes.”

  Silence. Then: “I don’t think I can get there before tomorrow night. And I reserve the right to back out.” Gaffan sounded like nothing so much as a teenage girl who had theoretically agreed only to coffee with her ex-boyfriend while knowing she had committed to much more.

  “Tomorrow night works.”

  THE COUNTERS AT FIUMICINO lit up at 5:30 a.m. The workers appeared out of nowhere, as if they’d slept in the belly of the airport. Wells found the Cyprus Airways counter and bought a ticket — firstclass, of course — to Larnaca. He used his Canadian passport, hoping it might take a little bit longer to pop in the CIA’s database.

  Nicosia, the Cyprus capital, was a boxy city stuffed with low-rise white apartment buildings and banks, shiny five- to ten-story glassand-steel towers that were designed to project honesty and rectitude but somehow sent the opposite signal. Eastern European and Russian money took vacations on Cyprus. Like its owners, it didn’t plan to stay forever, but it was happy enough to stop for a couple weeks and get a tan.

  Wells found a Citibank and rented two safe-deposit boxes. He took $200,000 and 200,000 euros, all he could comfortably carry, from the briefcase. He left a million dollars loose in one box, and the briefcase, which had another million or so in euros, in the second. He FedExed the key to the second box to Anne and called her to explain.

  “So this briefcase, what’s in it?”

  “Money.”

  “I don’t need money, John. And I definitely don’t need your money.”

  “It’s not my money.”

  “I still don’t need it.”

  “Give it away, then. Start a no-kill shelter or something.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Anne said finally. “But you know what I’d rather have? I’d rather have you start that shelter yourself.”

  “I’m not very good at no-kill.”

  She didn’t laugh. “This is going to get messy, isn’t it?”

  “It could.”

  “Just be sure you’re on the right side, then.”

  “I’m trying.”

  A MESSAGE FROM GAFFAN: Plane late. Missed connection in London. Expect me in a.m. Two full days after the bombing in Jeddah. Wells hated to wait, but he didn’t see an alternative. He took a room at a hostel and rented a Fiat and drove south toward the coast. Cyprus was a jumble of poverty and wealth, run-down cottages and new mansions. Wells puttered slowly along the south coast road, looking for a fishing village that would suit his needs.

  Gaffan arrived as promised the next morning. Wells picked him up at the airport, and on the way to the coast explained everything that had happened in France and Italy. Gaffan listened, didn’t ask questions. When Wells was done, he handed Gaffan the key to the first safe-deposit box.

  “This is yours. A million dollars.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Either way.”

  “You trust these men, John?”

  “I think so.”

  “Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”

  “They beat the alternative. And if these guys in Lebanon are connected to those bombings, we’ll be doing everyone a favor by getting rid of them. No matter who’s behind them.”

  “All right.” Gaffan tucked the key into his pocket. “I’m in.”

  Near Zygi, in the center of the south coast, Wells stopped at a fishing village that hadn’t gentrified, probably because of the cement factory on the hill above town. Two hundred run-down houses with red-tiled roofs clustered around a narrow harbor. The ships were small, their hulls rusty. Except for one, a sleek white cruiser, seventy feet long, at the end of the pier in the center of the harbor.

  Wells parked next to a man scraping barnacles from the hull of a trawler that looked barely seaworthy. “Speak English?”

  “A little.”

  Wells nodded at the cruiser. “Whose is that?”

  The man went back to scraping. They walked up the pier, slimy with fish guts, kelp, and jellyfish. Up close, the ship was impressive, low and fast, with big twin engines. A shirtless, burly man, early forties, shoulders covered by dull green tattoos, sat in a folding chair by the gangplank. A knife dangled from a leather scabbard on his hip. He looked at Wells and yawned. Wells couldn’t remember the last time someone had yawned at him. The gesture seemed particularly disrespectful.

  “We want to talk to your captain.”

  “I am captain.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “He’s busy. No tourists on this boat.”

  “We’re not tourists.”

  The guy shooed them away, closed his eyes. Wells stepped forward and, before the guy could reach for the knife, grabbed his arms and tugged him out of the chair and onto the deck. Gaffan grabbed his legs.

  “On three—”

  They swung him sideways and pitched him into the oily water behind the cruiser. He came up sputtering and shouting in Greek—

  And then Wells heard the unmistakable ch-chock of a shotgun being pumped. He turned slowly, hands raised, to see a small man with curly black hair standing at the back of the
cruiser, pointing a sawed-off at them. “You are looking for the captain?”

  WELLS AND GAFFAN FOLLOWED the man into a spotless café and up a narrow set of stairs to a terrace overlooking the harbor. In the corner, a gray-haired man drank coffee and studied what looked like People magazine. As Wells got closer, he saw that the magazine was, in fact, People.

  “Sit, please,” the gray-haired man said. They sat. “Is this your first time in Cyprus?” His English was excellent. Wells nodded. “And you’re American. What’s your name?”

  “Jim.”

  “Jim. I’m Nicholas. It’s a beautiful day here,” the man said. “Why would you disturb it? Throw my friend in the harbor.”

  “I need a ride to Lebanon. I look at your boat, I see a man who does business.”

  “MEA flies nonstop.”

  “Flying makes me nervous.”

  “Strangers make me nervous.”

  “I need to carry some supplies. The kind that don’t fly well.”

  “Most of the time, those supplies leave Lebanon. Not the other way.”

  “I mean the kind that go boom.”

  “What, specifically?”

  “Two pistols. Two silencers. Two AKs. Four hundred rounds. Two grenades. Two pairs of handcuffs.”

  “That’s a lot of supplies.”

  “I have a lot of money.”

  “Stand up, both of you.”

  They did. Nicholas carefully patted down Wells and Gaffan. “Who do you work for?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “This is a very stupid request. Yet you don’t look like stupid men.”

  Wells took the People and jotted down a cell number on Céline Dion’s face. Then pulled ten one-hundred-dollar bills from his pocket. He laid the money on the magazine like an open-faced sandwich and slid it to Nicholas. “Thanks for listening,” he said. “You want to do business, let me know. But decide soon.”

  “How much will you pay?”

  “You tell me.”

  NICHOLAS CALLED THE NEXT afternoon. He would provide the weapons and carry Wells to Lebanon. Gaffan wouldn’t be on the boat. He would fly into Beirut instead, insurance against Nicholas changing his mind halfway across and dumping Wells overboard.